Australian Author, Journalist, Speaker

A new home is like a blank canvas waiting for the first brush of the artist’s stroke – it’s a unique opportunity to express one’s personal interior style.

I have never been minimalist – a nice way of saying I have always lived with clutter and Olivier has been the same, so creating a relaxed, simple interior in a contemporary home isn’t going to be easy. Especially as we have two houses of stuff from former lives to accommodate. Without a steady hand, the interior could become a mish-mash of incongruent things plonked around the place in a harsh confusion. Or our living space could become a wonderful statement of our own evolving style. Whatever. It is going to be fun!

I glean information from many sources, my friends’ stylish interiors, public places and books. Such as my coffee table collection of books – French Chic by Florence de Dampierre, who writes on the art of decorating houses and how the French have honed interior décor into an art form the extravagance of the Sun King Louis XIV. And Simple Style by renowned British freelance stylist Julia Bird, who reckons the essence of contemporary style is simplicity – about clearing away the clutter and streamlining the home to create an unfussy, easily liveable and comfortable environment.

This sounds an awesome task for this bowerbird, until, coincidentally, I find that Lucinda Holdforth includes delightful snippets of French style in her book True Pleasures: A Memoir of Women inParis. She writes about Nancy Mitford, one of the famous Mitford sisters, who lived in Paris from 1947 to 1967: “I know the apartment was neither large nor grand, but furnished with a few fine screens, antiques and fresh flowers. Here Nancy Mitford wrote her books and letters, wearing her Dior dresses and a small string of pearls.’’

This excerpt is pleaseing because antiques sit comfortably within our contemporary home, which is “neither large nor grand” and I always have fresh flowers in the foyer at least. We have a delightful tapestry in our bedroom also, but, I won’t be found wearing either Dior or pearls as I write.

Olivier’s claim to fame in the kitchen is home-made pork rillettes, which is easy to make, keeps well and can be made in big quantities for a crowd.

For 1 kg of boneless pork belly (with plenty of fat) you will need ½ kg of back pork fat. Most butchers will remove the rind and bones for you and you will need to cut the pork belly into strips as for gravy beef and the pork fat must also be cut in small pieces. Rub the meat well with salt first.

You will also need:

125 ml of dry white wine

10 peppercorns crushed,

8 juniper berries, bruised

3 bay leaves, a crushed clove of garlic, a dozen thyme sprigs made into a bouquet garnet

¼ tsp cinnamon.

The pork will shred well with two forks if you cut the pork into thick strips where the bones were taken out and then again into smaller shorter strips of meat. Place everything except the wine into a covered oven dish, add two soup ladles of water and plunge the bouquet garnet into it. Bake in a slow oven, no more than 150C for four hours. Taste the pork and, add more salt and pepper if necessary. By this time the meat should be very soft and swimming in its own limpid fat.

Rillettes are bland if not seasoned well. Sieve contents through a wire sieve into a big bowl, and well drained to allow the fat to filter through. Use forks to pull the rillettes until they are finely shredded rather than a pate consistency.
Store in earthenware pots, preferably, and seal with melted pork fat and refrigerate. Remove before use to allow the rillettes to soften.

The year in France had its moment of joy with the birth of Giulia Sarkozy, daughter of one-time supermodel Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, 43, and the French president, Nicholas Sarkozy. (Hands up those who thought the marriage wouldn’t last).

Mr Sarkozy didn’t make the birth because of an urgent meeting in Frankfurt to try to stitch up a rescue package for the Eurozone crisis with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Afterwards, he spent a mere 50 minutes with the infant and her mum before rushing off to a waste disposal centre in western France, thus dismissing his paternity leave rights.

“We are fortunate enough to have a great joy,’’ Sarkozy told the assembly of workers.

“All the parents here can understand our very profound joy, a joy that is all the more profound for the fact that it is private.’’

They cheered the president and presented him with a bib for the new bub, an oak tree for the garden and Mince Alors, a book for Carla. Ironically, translated as “Thin Then’’, the book gives advice on losing weight, particularly after pregnancy and how not to become obsessed with dieting.

Ironically, Carla is making a very public appearance right now in cinemas around Australia with a bit part as a tour guide in Woody Allen’s latest film, Midnight in Paris.

French media reckons France’s First Lady is unpopular, yet Italian-born Carla has proved to be a stylish, gracious and beautiful consort to the President.

Marriage matters in France and family is still the foundation of French society, and although opinion polls show that Mr Sarkozy is behind his socialist rival, Francois Holland, a baby in Elysees Palace could well be a trump card.

On a much sadder note, French fashion legend, Loulou de la Falaise, Saint Laurent’s colourful muse, died at her home in northwest France this year, aged 64.

Louise Vava Lucia Henriette Le Bailly de la Falaise acted as Yves Saint Laurent’s “creative partner, confidante and sentinal’’ for three decades from 1972 until 2002, according to the obituary published in The Times.

She had eccentric roots with a wild Irish beauty, Rhoda Lecky Pike as her grandmother and a mother who said she christened her newborn daughter with perfume instead of water in 1948. However, because of her mother’s many affairs, little Louise was placed in foster care.

At age 20, she was a junior editor of Queen magazine when she met Saint Laurent, who had established his fashion house six years beforehand upon the death of Christian Dior in 1958.

De la Falaise and Saint Laurent immediately took to each other. “Apart from her striking red-haired, wisp-thin beauty, he was attracted by her directness of manner and edgy sense of humour. After a disastrous showing in 1971, she appreciated his gesture in sending her a box of high-cut emerald green fox fur coats,’’ The Times reported.

Within three years, Loulou was in Paris working with Saint Laurent, making jewellery for his fashion shows.

Loulou launched her own fashion label and eccentric accessories upon the retirement of Saint Laurent.

Once when asked what clothes she collected, she said: “I don’t collect clothes – I hand them down. They do sometimes turn into a pile of dust, but that’s tribute to a good life.’’

There are a few good reasons to brace oneself for the reality of old age by viewing The Iron Lady, about the life of Margaret Thatcher, one of the greatest women leaders of the 20th century.

Firstly, the film is a toast to feminism as the headline from The Spectator in London says “Truth is, Thatcher led feminists out from behind the kitchen sink.’

It tells the true story of the metamorphosis of Margaret from poor grocer’s daughter to ultimate power as Prime Minister of Great Britain, but then there is the dramatic decline and disturbing images of Thatcher today, a frail, aged lonely woman in the first stages of dementia. Director Phyllida Lloyd leaves a lingering second message – that power is fleeting and that there is a high price to pay for political fame.

Her awesome political achievement is snapped in the photo session at the head of a huge all-male cabinet when elected Prime Minister. In a warts and all portrayal, Lloyd does not flinch from showing Thatcher’s ruthless 11-year rule, and its social consequences for Britain, before her downfall at the hands of colleagues.

Hollywood actress, Meryl Streep is magnificent in her astute portrayal of Thatcher, particularly her ability to switch from the all-powerful political figure to the pathetic, frail aged Margaret in flashbacks. Streep captures Thatcher’s ambition and ruthlessness to fix up the woes of a socialist Britain with brutal public policy and the social rebellion of the miners’ strike, the poll tax riots and the IRA bombings. Thatcher’s personal life was pretty much one-dimensional and it is obvious that her family bore the brunt of her ambition, particularly long-suffering husband Denis, ably portrayed by Jim Broadbent.

However, an actor can only work with the script provided in this case by Abi Morgan and Bruce Anderson in The Spectator writes that the film’s depiction of the complex character of Denis Thatcher as a light-weight nincompoop was “the real weakness’’. Instead, he was “the most important figure in the real supporting cast’’, the only one who stood by her in the end.

Anderson criticises how the film depicted the young Denis (played by Harry Lloyd) and young Margaret (played by Alexandra Roach) negotiating a political pre-nup as “inaccurate and unconvincing’’. And he writes his own scenario given Denis’s “upper-middle-class, British Club’’ background and subservient role of women in the 1950s.

“When I married the little woman, I knew she’d been interested in politics, but didn’t take that seriously. She’d never had any money and I’d sort that out. She could have a dressmaker and a decent hairdresser; sort of thing girls enjoy,’’ he writes.

“I’d put her in the club, so there’d be sprogs to bring up. In the long fullness, if she wanted to be chairman of the local Tory advisory women’s whatnot, no harm in that. But if someone had said to me: “Thatcher, forget local female thingummy – that little woman of yours is going to be prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’’, I might have scratched the fixture. I’m glad I didn’t.’’

Whatever. History has it that Margaret married a brilliant young barrister who stood by her on her climb to the top and was there when she tumbled down again. It’s an inspiring film for women of all ages and confronting in Streep’s portrayal of a frail, aged Thatcher. For once, we are told the whole story and the reality of the last stages of life have not been edited out.

Olivier’s claim to fame in the kitchen is home-made pork rillettes, which is easy to make, keeps well and can be made in big quantities for a crowd.

For 1 kg of boneless pork belly (with plenty of fat) you will need ½ kg of back pork fat. Most butchers will remove the rind and bones for you and you will need to cut the pork belly into chunks as for a stew and the pork fat must also be cut in small pieces. Rub the meat well with salt first.

The pork will shred well with two forks if you cut the pork into thick strips where the bones were taken out and then again into smaller, shorter strips of meat. Place everything except the wine into a covered oven dish, add a soup ladle of water and plunge the bouquet garnet into it. Bake in a slow oven, no more than 150C for four hours. Taste the pork and, add more salt and pepper if necessary. By this time the meat should be very soft and swimming in its own limpid fat.

Rillettes are bland if not seasoned well. Sieve contents through a wire sieve into a big bowl, and well drained, use forks to pull the rillettes until they are finely shredded rather than a pate consistency.
Store in earthenware pots, preferably, and seal with melted pork fat and refrigerate. Remove before use to allow the rillettes to soften.